Ribbon
by Kansas Kusuri
Summary: Riku/Roxas AU. There's a curse and a child's story and oh, god, but there's something wrong.


_**Obsessions, again**_  
Title: Ribbon  
Pairing: Riku/Roxas  
Warnings: Sex. Gross stuff. AU.  
Wordcount: 6131  
Notes: This is _very obviously_ based on a children's story. I'm guessing the story is called 'ribbon' as well, but I have no idea where I could find it. Anyone know? And if you do, help? XD

The house was eerie, even though it was small and curious. Riku stayed close to his mother as she was introduced to her new neighbor, stayed close as the neighbor brought out her own little boy, and stayed close even as he was told to go and play with little Sora.

Words were exchanged overhead, 'sullen' and 'moody' and 'children are' and 'perfectly so' and all sorts of things that became less important when little Sora stared at Riku and, finding the other boy not to be a threat, offered, "Would you like to play?"

"No." Riku was very adamant, he thought.

"Why?"

"Your house is scary." 6-year-olds didn't _generally_ act with propriety. Sora looked to his mother for guidance, but she was quite observed in the rites of getting to know her neighbor. So he lied, to make it easy.

"No, it isn't. You're perfectly safe here...just follow me, and we can play in my room."

Riku bit his lip and he thought about it and finally he said "Fine." He didn't want to have to wait in the stuffy parlor while his mother talked incessantly and obnoxiously; that would be frightfully dull, and given a choice, he reasoned, it was better to be scared then bored.

The hallway went on-and-on. It hadn't looked so long from the outside. Sora was indicating rooms here and there, guest chambers and studies and libraries and all the nice things. The farther they went, the less agitated Riku became. It may have been dark but it was tame, tame, and simple things everywhere. But this didn't diminish his curiosity, especially as the doors became more and more inviting, and their contents, unknown to him, became more and more interesting. The next time the hallway divided, Riku hung back as Sora turned left. There was an especially magnificent wooden door he'd seen, covered with an intricate, script-like design...and it was open, just a bit open, just enough for a sneaking child to slip through.

The room was splendid but it was musty and unaired. And there was a silhouette trembling on the shades...

Riku shuddered and thought it was a ghost. But no, no, because the shape was sitting on something and surely ghosts don't sit. It was a windowseat, and it was a _person_ on it.

Emboldened by this logic, Riku went to the shade. He gathered the filmy material into his hands and he pulled it aside and what was revealed to him was the strangest and most riveting child he'd ever and would ever lay eyes on.

It was another boy, Riku's guide's age, surely, and perhaps the two even looked the same -- this boy had the same messy hair, though it was blond, and he had identical dark-blue eyes. But where Sora looked silly and kind, the windowseat boy's face was set and blank and he looked more like a pretty life-sized doll or like the dead poorhouse girl who'd fallen into the river last Sunday then like a living breathing child.

But that was to be digested leader. What was bizarre and inescapable was the enormous ribbon knotted about the boy's neck -- light blue silk, stiff with starch or _something_, and it was tied into a most splendid flower shape that seemed to spill from an obscured neck for that same simple purpose of a disguise. The boy's eyes rested on Riku's, defiantly, as if _daring_ him to yank off the thread and just _see_ what was under it.

"Oh--" This a light, puzzled voice from the door, as Riku caught onto the end of the ribbon with the intent to pull it off. "Roxas -- Riku, stop!!"

Sora, of course, and, feeling foolish, Riku let go of the magnificent blue ribbon and backed away from the doll boy, mumbling an apology that was obscured by Sora's whine -- "You're not _supposed_ to be up, Roxas! You're not supposed to be talking! Mama said so, Mama _said._"

This boy, dubbed Roxas, scowled and put his finger to his lips. "Don't _tell._ Please don't."

"You'll get hurt! And -- Riku, oh." Sora sounded overwhelmed and rightly, as he was. "My brother...he's a..an invu, inva,"

"Invalid." Roxas said, coldly, as he slipped off the sill. "And I'm _not._"

"What are you, then?" Riku knew it wasn't his place to pry but it was odd, odd, and what did invahleed mean? "Why aren't you playing?"

Roxas indicated the ribbon and seemed about to say something acrid, mean, when his mother entered the room, with the neighbor in tow.

The woman gasped and her eyes went wide. "_Roxas._" She said, and Riku knew for sure she was furious. "_Why_ are you up? Go to your room -- you're to be _asleep_. Go!"

The dollboy turned his cold eyes to his mother and, almost contemptuously, he inclined his head back, then forward, and he left the room to go somewhere else in the eerie dark small house.

Riku had long since sensed that something was wrong, and _someone's_ punishment was close at hand. He was determined not to let it be him. He ran to his mother and installed himself close to her side, and was relieved to see her smile fondly at him. _she_ was unaware of danger, anyway.

But he cringed away again when the other woman came to him, when she put her face down _real_ close to his and smiled widely. She scared him, more then the house did, more then anything. "Roxas's ribbon is very, very special to him." she said.

Riku grabbed onto his mother's skirts, something he hadn't done since he was four.

"You cannot touch it. You'd make him very sad." Her mouth streched tighter and Riku's mother finally started to protest, "My son didn't--"

The woman continued. "If you ever touch it or tug at it again," and her voice was too quite for Mother to hear, "I'll kill you."

Riku whimpered and he nodded and finally Roxas's mother backed away and said, more naturally, more angrily, "I'm sorry. Darling. I'd love to chat later, tea, maybe. But now, I-- you _do_ understand the case--"

Her neighbor said yes, though she didn't, and then she said, "We've got to be going, anyway. Another day, I'm so very sorry."

They followed an ancient old butler back down the hall and when they were at the door, then out, then in the sun and on the path, Riku was all grateful and safe and had the time to spare a thought towards the brothers he'd met. Strange, strange. Little Sora was being whipped right now, most likely. Roxas, no, because he was that word, delakit, that meant you couldn't touch him, like a glass window or a pretty vase. Because he had that absurd, that silly, that terribly intriguing bow bursting from his neck...

"Mama?"

"Mmhmm?"

"What do you think is on Roxas's neck?"

"You _are_ perceptive." That meant nothing. "I do not think you're likely to ever find out, dear." That did, and Riku smiled and shrugged his shoulder.

"I think I will. Maybe I will."

And he would, of course, but not so soon nor so quickly as he thought then.

The next _memorable_ encounter with the ribbon was when Riku was ten years old and Roxas, now strong enough to play and bright enough to win, was nine. They were friends, in the way that neighbors must be when there's no other small children in the immediate area. _That_ day Sora was ill, hayfever it was supposed, and so he was removed from the general frame. Riku recovered from missing the boy quickly when it dawned on him that _now_ would be a perfect time to confirm what he was sure was right.

"It's a disease, isn't it?" he asked, as he smacked the birdie back over the net. "Something got in you and rotted your neck."

Roxas missed the birdie and, smirking as he trotted to retrieve it, called back, "You're an idiot. What disease does that?"

"I don't know, do I? But that's _why_--" he swung out the racket, connected just barely, but got it over. "You were in so long--" _Swish, smack_ "last year. Why you couldn't ever--" once more, point! "play."

Roxas hit back and it was unexpectedly violent. The birdie slammed into the court next to Riku and he barely even noticed. "Why do you care so much?" Roxas asked, coming up to the net and twining his fingers into the string-mesh as he stared at his friend. "You like the ribbon more then you like me."

Riku didn't lie, but far from being displeased, Roxas laughed, and nodded, approvingly. "If I take it off, I'll die. Alright?"

"Liar."

"No."

"_Why._"

But Roxas's eyes were wandering and he was growing bored. Hints and games could only be so complex at nine, and besides, he'd already won. "Nanny's calling. I suppose it's supper-time..."

Riku knew by now when to and when not to press Roxas for answers and words and companionship. You took what was given, with the blond, and with his brother, for that. "Yes. Well. Will your mother...?"

"No. She's busy in the study." Roxas said this lightly, unconcernedly. "Hurry up."

He did that day, but he became more obsessed with the ribbon the more he saw Roxas, and that was very, far too often. But there were no more serious clues to it's origins for several years, and sometimes, he thought he might forget about it in time.

He would not, of course. The ribbon was just as crisp and clean and mysterious as it had been ten years ago the next time a new development in the case came about, that is, two weeks after Riku's sixteenth birthday and three months after Roxas's fifteenth.

On that day (a Friday, Riku recalled, after lessons were over) Riku was informed of two, most tragic, passings. First was his great-uncle, a man called Gracey, who lived on the hill overlooking Roxas and Sora's house. He was a bitter and querulous old man who had left his mansion and his fortune to his youngest great-nephew, not out of any great love for the boy, but out of an extreme and spiteful hatred for his closer relatives. The second, which troubled Riku much more, was the premature death of Roxas's mother.

"She wasn't ill, though." He said to his mother, puzzled. "Didn't you just take tea with her?"

"Yes, and a _heart failure_, they say..." the woman sighed, as she picked up her needles and went back to knitting a sombre black scarf for the funerals she would be required to attend. "I don't understand. She was not so old, either..." she trailed off, and then proposed, "Riku, why don't you go over there? I'm sure those boys would be happy to see a friend. Now that they're alone, their father dead some thirteen years or more by now...go!"

Riku did, with misgivings. What if, what if, they didn't _want_ to see him? He rang the bell and was admitted to the study with the window seat and the big carved door. It was the room he'd met Roxas in, he recalled dimly.

Said blond was sitting at a heavy mahogany table, looking over the documents that were spread all over the surface. "Sora's off _crying_," he said disdainfully, turning in his chair to see his guest. "He's left me with all of this. Christ. All this money to be sorted and the funeral to be arranged."

Riku picked up some sheets, feigning interest in the numbers and figures and the meaningless pictures. "Did she leave you a great deal of money?" he inquired. Surely she had; Sora and Roxas were much to young to work, after all.

Roxas shook his head. "All she had. There's _enough_ for a few years. But there's a great deal of debt. Oh...I cannot believe she'd die. Just like that! We went looking for her and she'd sort of tumbled off and the _flies_ on her face--"

Riku did not want to hear the graphic bits. "But can you live on it?"

"If there was only one, it would be enough. But it's just not enough money for two, and I wouldn't trust Sora to live on his own, if we divided it." He smiled, fondly, as if thinking of a much smaller child then his twin. "He's got no head for math and he can only take care of others, it seems. He'd most likely invite a homeless fellow into his home, were he alone, and be raped and shot and killed and such."

Riku regarded this disturbing possibility briefly, and realized it was all quite likely.

"I think I'll leave." Roxas said, chewing on the end of the thick pen he was using to stack up columns of sums. "I can take some of our money and make more, I'm sure. I'll work in the city, or--"

The other boy had to cut Roxas off, again. He was not disgusted, this time -- he was panicked and perhaps even then, a little bit inspired. "Your ribbon -- it's a scar. You hurt your neck when you were little and it's a hideous, pusing wound that no one shall ever see."

Roxas snickered, in the pleased, mean sort of way he sometimes took with Riku and his guessing. "Oh, no."

"You won't tell me what it is, even now?"

"Did you think I would?"

"Then--" Riku spoke with confidence he didn't really have. "You'll just have to stay here." Roxas was about to laugh again, or protest, or throw cold and nasty facts at him. They weren't needed. "Quiet. My great-uncle's left me _quite_ a lot of money, _and_ his house."

"The house overlooking mine?" Was he imagining it, or had Roxas leaned closer to him, curiously? Riku pressed his advantage, because he knew quite well he could lose it just as fast.

"Yes. It's nice, isn't it? Expensive, like you like. I'll share it with you, you know. I will."

Roxas was bright and Roxas thought he understood and oh, Riku was insane if he did indeed mean this proposal. But it would be a most lovely security and then all the numbers would go away...

"What must I do, to share it with you?" he asked, obediently, lightly.

"Marry me." Roxas laughed but his serious silly friend was truly serious. "We're friends, aren't we? Out of necessity or fate perhaps, but we are. I can't let you, my friend, get away without telling me that secret, Roxas, and you _won't_ go away if you don't have too -- I know you, I know you're as lazy and as spoiled as your brother, only you're meaner and you're more selfish, too." The blond seemed pleased by these accusations. "I'll take care of you forever..." Riku took the wooden arms of Roxas's chair in his hands, then forced himself to kneel, like his mother said men did. His fingers trembled over Roxas's lap, and just ghosted over the end of the baby-blue ribbon. It shivered accordingly and then his hand was taken by another's.

"No church-man will marry us."

"They _all_ will, if we pay them enough."

"Your mother will disown you."

"She won't."

"Your family will."

"I've still got Gracey's money. I don't care about them, and neither do you."

Roxas meditated for a bit and he thought about being forever bound to Riku's side, watching his husband work and living off of that work. Forever living with a boy who he didn't really love but didn't really hate. A boy who was curious, curious.

"May I bring Axel with me? I'm afraid he'd be the man to rape and shoot Sora." Axel was a servant of the house, of an indiscernible age and motive. Riku hated him immensely.

"Of course."

"Will you buy me a ring?"

"A dainty expensive thing with a bright-blue diamond custom-made just to match your bow."

"Then I'll marry you." Roxas kissed his sudden finance gently on the forehead, and was pleased to see Riku flush awkwardly. "When you are eighteen I will be yours. Now..won't you help me with these papers?"

Now maybe Roxas grew up and got meaner, and maybe adolescence changed them both to be less of friends, less of confidantes, but still their wedding occured smoothly, two years after this meeting, and it was a small but lovely affair. Sora escorted his brother down the aisle, and even teared up dutifully (and sincerely, which Roxas had not even asked for!) as he took his seat by Riku's mother and his servant Axel. The pastor, an amiable, bribable local presence recited the vows correctly and both boys said I Do when they had to (Roxas to the money, Riku to the ribbon) and then kissed obediently, if not so passionately.

Their wedding eve, Riku thought, was much more memorable, anyway.

The bedroom was clean and warm, that February night, though it was raining outside and the rest of Gracey manor was filled with dust and dirt. Roxas went into the toilet room and Riku hung up his bride's wedding gown in their closet, before he stripped down and crawled into his bed, surprised to find himself excited and aroused at the idea of fucking -- or perhaps making love to -- the nasty boy he'd joined himself to.

Roxas came out and he was naked of his dressing-robe. The white gold and blue ring glinted on his finger, though, and the bow was splendid and tied and secure as it had been these past twelve years. Riku had not thought about the body at all, but it was lithe and childish still, and the sight of Roxas's erection was disconcerting, but it added to his body's excitement. And when he spoke, his voice was unintentionally lustful. "Come here, then. I suppose...it's how couples go..."

Roxas lay boldly next to his new husband, let his legs lay open and smirked in the familiar superior way. Was he thinking about the mind games he could play with sex? Or about his brother, alone and cold in the house down the hill? He put his lips to Riku's face and said, "I _am_ a virgin. And I'm nervous..." liar, liar! "Won't you do it _now?_"

Riku complied, the best he understood how to. He let his hands run over Roxas's nipples, first, and he kissed the bow where the neck was hidden. "If I pulled this off..."

"You wouldn't." Roxas purred, spreading his legs farther and letting his penis press into Riku's stomach. The silver-haired boy gasped at the feeling, and brought his attention lower. His hands slid under Roxas's buttocks now, searching and touching and smiling wider each time Roxas shuddered or twisted. He shoved his fingers where he could, mystified but pleased when Roxas slid down to force the fingers in farther, and when he groaned and whined most vulnerably, "_Won't_ you put it in me? There's th-that stuff, on the ledge there--" Riku found the lubrication and smeared it on his cock and decided to hell with propriety, Roxas was certainly enjoying himself -- he slipped his cock _inside_, just like that. Roxas screamed and hissed but he seemed to adjust quick, enough to arch his back _up_ enough to give Riku some proper _leverage._

"You're not-- ah. Not so _bad_," Roxas spit out, and then Riku's mouth was on his and it _was_ a kiss of passion, even as Riku's hands tangled in the ends of the ribbon as if making love to _that_, too, as he pulled out and went in once _more_. He broke inside Roxas, and the heat and the feeling of cum and the violation and filthiness of it all broke Roxas right back.

Riku fell to the side and pulled his bride to him. Roxas let him, though there were blood stains along with sex stains on the shee below him. "Fast," he muttered. "Do slow down, next time."

Riku said hush and he slept, but that night he dreamed in and of bright colors and good sex and adulthood and secrets, secrets, secrets.

The dreams became more frequent as Riku began to work, his job of playing at being a doctor requiring him to travel the county and state more often. The time spent apart from his bride was devoted to thinking of him, and the blue ribbon, once an aching itch at the back of his mind, came forward and grew into a complete and unavoidable obsession.

And one night, when he was lying lonely and cold in an inn in the Northern county, it occured to him that Roxas might be hiding bites and kisses and traces of someone else's fingerprints underneath the ribbon.

The more he thought about it, the more it fell into place: Nine-year-old Roxas had had a disease. Riku hadn't been an idiot, by now he'd learned of the diseases that do rot your neck. If the ribbon had been removed then, then yes, his lovely child bride would have fallen down dead. But now the disease was cured, all healed, and that was where his mother's fortune had vanished to. Roxas was healed by fifteen and the ribbon could have been removed, but the boy simply hadn't wanted too.

Why?

Well by then, Riku agonized, Roxas would have been old enough to be kissing people. Grown-ups and tutors and brothers and _servants_...old enough to say leave marks here, so that my finance doesn't see...

and leave the ribbon so Riku would still care, still follow it, still trust that it's purpose was totally innocuous! After all, Roxas had said he would only marry if he was provided for, if he was given money...

Once the idea was conceived of, Riku was sure of it, and when he came home, he was certain Roxas would already have left him for someone more perceptive, someone less like _foolish_ him...

Roxas was sleeping, one of his uncle's old servants informed him, and oh, did Master Roxas seem so lonely for his husband all that week! So lonely in the big house with only the servants and the tombstones out back. His brother was busy, see, off on a honeymoon with a little slip of a lady, and all these week, it was only Roxas, all alone. But how kind of Master Riku to return early, an entire day before Master Roxas's nineteenth birthday!

These words brought an immeasurable comfort to Riku and the obsession was temporarily hushed. He bought Roxas a sweet fat orange-colored kitten for his birthday and Roxas cooed over it and _smiled_, not meanly or ironically, but almost joyfully, and that was very good.

They had a nice party and a nice day and nice sex at the end and Riku was almost able to look at the ribbon and almost able to convince himself that he didn't care about it.

This sort of security lasted for the days he was home -- they played badminton like they had done as children and they rode together like they had done as teenagers and they were friends, more then husband and selfish, bribed wife for a while.

And when Riku left again, he fell asleep right away, even though this inn was mean and poor and terribly cold. He thought about easy things, like how Sora was coming home the next day, and how he'd really have to go and call on him, sometime, and meet his bride, a girl called Kairi who Sora had of course met on the street. Charity had turned to love and their love became romantic...of course, of course, and that was alright, wasn't it...

He was awakened by the crash of thunder outside, the chaos of a storm. And by the violent sound of his window shattering, the wind driving it right through the rotted wallboards.

He ran downstairs and left some money on the keeper's table and found his servant, a teenage boy his uncle had left to him. "Hurry up," Riku hissed, though the boy looked scared out his mind. "I don't want to stay here, it's going to fall right down." This notion turned the servant's fear into panic, but he moved alright. They hitched the horse to the buggy together -- "You can't, sir! It's my job! You uncle'd have a fit, he would!" "I don't care! You can't do this either!" -- and they took off, splashing down a road that was thick with mud and slush. It would be a long journey, Riku knew, as he forced the horse back on track (the boy was in the buggy. He couldn't have been more then fourteen.) and hit it again, hit it again. He'd be home by two, maybe three...the thought of Roxas sleeping, unawares, made him smile and smack and carry on.

Opening the stable door was it's own sort of hell, and forcing the frightened nag into her proper stall was worse. Riku saw the boy inside, told him to go down to his quarters and wake some matron and have her light him a fire, and then put him out of mind. He wanted to see Roxas, and just Roxas. For once, the ribbon was extraneous and it was only him...

Him. Roxas was not in his room. There was a door open, though, down the hallway -- Riku could feel the cold air drifting from it.

His bride was staring outside, intently, and he was unmussing his bow. It's perfect folds were disarrayed. "What are you doing?" Riku asked, quietly, horrified.

Roxas turned to him and did not look surprised, nor guilty. "I was waiting for you." he said, smoothly. "I saw the carriage from a distance."

"But, your ribbon..." Riku asked, helplessly. He'd missed it, just missed it, he was certain! The secret!

"Nothing." was the amused answer. "Nothing you--"

"_Master_," came a heavy, insolent drawl. It was Axel, seeming to materialize from the dark shadows of the room.

"What are you doing here--?" Riku asked, angry. The servant looked at hos other master belligerently, then turned back to Roxas. "I've found what it is that concerns you. Will you come with me, through my quarters?"

"Yes." Riku made a move to follow - but Roxas said, condescendingly, "You've got to sleep, Riku. And it's nothing, nothing."

"_Nothing_." Axel echoed, and they both vanished through the door.

Riku didn't try to force it. He didn't protest, and he didn't let himself think that Axel was leaving the bites and swollen-up kisses all down Roxas's neck and this encounter, this was proof. He took off his wet clothes and lay down in his bed and slept, before his obsession had time to reawaken and keep him from his rest.

Roxas was asleep next to him when he awoke. Asleep and vulnerable...Riku put his finger right on the top edge of the bow, where the ribbon met the skin. He tried to work his finger under the blue stuff, but it was tamped too perfectly against the neck. Oh... he ran his hands over the band, feeling for anything other then flesh, some imprint of a scar or of a kiss.

Nothing. Roxas was starting to stir under him, too. His eyelids were just twitching open when Riku let go and began to feign sleep. Roxas was bored by this and he got up and began to dress. "I want to go to the town over." he said, knowing full well his husband was listening. "I'm going to go to the library. And. My cat ran away."

He left without waiting for an answer.

Riku was most surprised, in the aftermath and it's silence. He had not wanted to look at his bride. He had not wanted to hear his voice, and he had not cared at all about his cat. He had only wanted to know about the ribbon...

He sent a messenger to Sora's house that day. His friend was asked to please come up to Gracey manor, and not bring his bride, because this wasn't the time to get to know her. Rather, his friend had a question concerning his brother, and it was most urgent that it be answered.

Sora was preceptive when he had to be and he already knew the answer he would have to give when Riku asked, _why_, again.

He met his host in the parlor. Riku showed him where he could sit and they had tea, and talked about their childhood and their careers and their neurosis and other such tea-time subjects.

"But you wanted to ask me something." Sora said, when his cup was empty. "It's certainly not how I'm getting on, playing at lawyering."

"No." Riku said. "It's about Roxas's ribbon."

"Yes. I thought so...oh, you're going be annoyed, Riku." Sora said. "I won't beat around it. I just don't know. Mother never told me what, exactly, and Roxas won't, either."

It wa Axel cleaning up the coffee-table and it was Axel who sniggered at the answer.

"Oh. How are you?" Sora asked, mildly.

"_What_ are you laughing for?" Riku asked, irritably.

The servant laughed outright this time. "_Begging_ your pardon. I just think it's _strange_ that Master Roxas wouldn't tell his own husband nor his own brother what he'd tell to _me._"

Kisses on a bare neck, another's touch on pretty pale skin. Riku grimaced and had to force himself to speak evenly. "What did Roxas tell to you, Axel?"

"Why, all about his ribbon." The man drawled, smirking slightly. "Did you want to know? I'll tell."

Sora's face was all curiosity and eager. Riku, after having spent so much time thinking of, obsessing about, the ribbon, could not quite believe that the answer could come about so easily.

"Young Roxas fell when he was four." Axel said, inviting himself to perch upon the arm of the sofa, smirking down at Sora as he did. "Fell, and it was right under an_old_ pane of glass, a big thing in the chandelier above, a decoration, you might say. His foolish mother saw, she did, and she saw that the pane wasn't attached to the ceiling so well. And she didn't run fast enough-- _zzzsh!_" He drew his hand across his neck. "The glass chose then to fall off, and cut off baby Roxas's head with it. So sad! And the mother didn't like that. She liked her baby Roxas all intact, you see. So she grabbed out her sash from her dress and put the baby's head back on and then she tied it right back on. But that wasn't enough, so she prayed to a devil, maybe _the_ Devil, and she promised that, if only her baby could live like this, she'd do anything, kill her other baby or give up her body or what, what, what do you want, Master Devil, sir? And he said nothing, dear, nothing, just a curse. A little one. Your boy won't be bothered at all. Well. This sounds pretty good to the lady, yes? So she says, yes! And..." Axel stood now, and picked up the tea-table. "Under that ribbon there's one think smooth cut, all the way around, and if you take the ribbon off, then that's it, his head, it falls right off."

Riku laughed and laughed because oh, what nonsense! "You-- you idiot!" he grinned at his friend, and shook his head, _no._ "That isn't possible, you fool. That's ridiculous!"

But Sora was thinking it over and he asked, narrow-eyed, "What is the curse, Axel?"

"Well, I don't know that, do I?" the man asked, shrugging. "The Devil didn't tell anyone, not even your mum. But I do think Roxas has got a pretty good idea of it."

"Would he tell us?" Riku was struck by how Sora believed it, and then he began to wonder, if maybe he might believe it, only a little bit. The lady's face when she had said, _Touch it again and I'll kill you_ had been so very very serious.

"I don't know." Axel said, opening the door with his elbow. But he turned to smirk again, and it was much like Roxas's own, that haughty, nasty, superior face. "I'd ask him about his cat first, were I you."

This puzzling anecdote was mulled over, briefly, but Sora really had to be getting home, Kairi would be missing him and he, he admitted with a grin, was missing her. "I'll talk to Roxas, in the morning." He promised. "Of course it's insane, but you never do know...I'm sure he was just misleading Axel, just playing, like he will." Neither quite believed it but Riku was willing to accept it.

They talked a bit more, about politics and the weather, and then Sora went home, and Roxas arrived back a few hours later.

Riku stared at Roxas and tried to care for him, but his eyes were drawn and pulled to the ribbon, and he could not stand to hear his bride's voice as he pictured a severed and rejoined vocal cord, and voice box smashed into halves.

But tomorrow it would be better. Tomorrow Roxas would speak with his brother and come to understand that Riku had become obsessed so that Roxas recedeed into the thread and that, to be cured, the thread must come off and it's -- what -- be exposed.

The picture of the cut all around was gruesome and intriguing but Riku forced himself to be realistic, and to know that Axel was a crazy nasty liar, whose kisses were scattered all over Roxas's neck.

When they went to the bedroom, still in silence, Riku found himself restless and awake and eager for the next day.

It was at midnight, precisely, that Roxas's eyes opened slowly and he stared at Riku, looking dollike and blank as he had been the day they'd first seen each other. "Riku..."

"Yes?"

"My brother. Where is he?"

"At home." Riku said, puzzled. "Why?"

Roxas had gotten up, and was pulling his dressing-gown over his sleep-clothes. "I want to see his house. That's all. I just think..."

What Roxas thought was never said. Riku pulled his own robe on and they got up, and went to the chamber from which Sora's house could be seen.

It was burning.

Riku put his hand to his mouth and tried not to scream. "We-- We've got to go to them. Send someone to the fire department. We have to hurry. We have to go." He turned for the door, intending to run, but Roxas's hands holding tight to his robe made him stop.

"Please don't." Roxas said, and he had never said the word please before. "You can't. We can't."

"Your brother, Roxas. _Sora_ is..." but he turned to his bride and took his hands. And strange that he should, but he remembered Axel, and the question he'd advised asking. "Where is your kitten, Roxas?"

"It drowned." the boy said, miserably. "The night of the storm. It was outside when the rain started -- I didn't dare go outside to find it, but I was looking for it, from the window...and I saw it drown. I was going to undo the ribbon myself, but I couldn't. And then Axel came in with the body."

"Is that when...?"

"I told him about my ribbon. He told me what he told you. He wasn't lying. And now I know what the curse is, I think. I think she made it so that the people I care for all die. Simple, isn't it? Almost dull, such a simple, nasty spell."

"Impossible, Roxas. Impossible." He looked out the window again and he fancied he could feel the heat of the blaze drawing closer. "There's no time now! There still might be a chance!"

"No. I don't want to see Sora all burned and black and stinking like my cat was, all bloated and dead. I don't want to see his wife like that."

Riku sighed, but he sat down when Roxas pushed him gently to a chair. "Are _you_ going to tell me what your ribbon is hiding?"

"I think you should see." Roxas said, with a bitter little smile. "It's not so very dramatic or interesting. I don't know what it looks like myself."

He put the end of the blue silk ribbon into Riku's hand. "You'll die, Roxas."

"I've been dead, I think. And you -- oh, you. Why are you -- oh, Riku, why are you crying? All you wanted was to know...right?" He asked again, unsure. "Right?"

"I'll miss you." Riku said, dully. "It'll be lonely, Axel and I sitting alone here, not talking, in the Gracey house."

"But you'll _know_ what it is. Would you rather wait another thirty, forty, fifty years to see? I know you. You won't stop wondering about my bow, my wound, until you see it."

Riku looked at the ribbon in his hand.

Roxas took a step back so the thread went taunt. "Come on." he hissed. "I don't _want_ to see you die. I don't _want_ to bury him."

Riku pulled and it came away easy. The loops and furls of the magnificent blue bow tightened and fell out, and there was a thin dark stain appearing on the part on Roxas's neck. "_Faster_." Roxas said, and then --

the string fell away and there wasn't a disease, or a scar, or someone else's kisses. It was just a thin line, an open wound, and Riku covered his eyes with the ribbon so as not to see his bride fall dead.

It hung there, powerless and plain, and it reflected the fire below. Riku cried, but only a little, as he realized that now that he wanted to say things to Roxas, there weren't any words.


End file.
